smileys

[Anon]

look, this is the problem:

i made a directory called "/images/smileys/", in here are 131 different files (.gif and .png). i want to give people the possibility to add these smilies in their comments, but i think its a waste of time to create this line for every smile :

$comment = eregi_replace("🙂","<img src=\"images/smileys/smile.png\" border=\"0\">",$comment);

actually i was thinking about a piece of code that gets the filenames out of the smilie directory and puts them in a table, so the people can see what they should write to get the smiley, like this :

smiley : code :
<image> [smile.png]

<image> [laugh.png]
<image> [bonk.gif]

and then when somebody puts [smile.png] in their textbox and posts their message, the code automaticly converts this "tag" into <img src=\"/images/smileys/smile.png\" border=\"0\"> for the output to the browser.

is this possible?

many thanks for your reactions

[Anon]

Hi,
Yes I agree that doing 1 line for 1 smiley is just a waste of time. I would create an array containing all possible smiley codes, then create image files for each smiley which will have corresponding smiley hexadecimal code as a name (to avoid file system confusions), and then just scan through an array, open corresponding file ... voila!
So in "pseudo language" (I don't know PHP and not going to) it would look like

example begin

Smileys : array of string = { "😉", ":-)", ";-)))" .. and .. other .. crap };

foreach Element in Smileys
{
if (TheMessage contains Element)
{
replace Element in TheMessage with "<img src=\"/imgs/blah/blah/\"" . HexRepresentation(Element) . ".gif\" />";
}
}

<< example end

The HexRepresentation function returns hexadecimal representation of a string, for example "😉" will be "3B29" etc. Of course corresponding file "/imgs/blah/blah/3B29.gif" should exist. All image files should be in the same format (otherwise the example will be a little bit more complex). And in my opinion the idea of forcing users to remember each smilye's image file is not going to excite your users at all.
Hope this will help.

[Anon]

$dir = opendir('images/smileys');
$loop = 0;
while(($image = readdir($moddir))!==false) {
$ext = explode(".", $image);
$ext = $ext[1];
if ($image != "." && $image != ".." && $ext == "png" || $ext == "gif") {
$smileys[$loop] = $image
$loop++;
}

}

that will get all the file names into an array, for you and you can easily add new ones. if you want it to replace 🙂 type things it gets a bit harder, id recomend using some sort of data base or even just a flat file thing if you need any help email me and ill try to give you a hand if i can.

[Anon]

thanks

ill try making it